The use of the Internet for communications has become inseparably intertwined with our modern lives, and its use for various purposes is rapidly increasing. Unfortunately, cyber-attacks or other malicious activities involving the Internet, commonly referred to as hacking, are also on the rise. As a result, the community of Internet users is becoming more and more vulnerable to malicious activities.
The electrical power grid that supplies electricity to homes, schools and businesses is no exception to these attacks and vulnerabilities. Electricity is an important component in nearly every aspect of modern life. Accordingly, there is an ongoing need to protect the electrical grid and its associated communications from being compromised by a cyber-attack.
Performance monitoring tools measure power system conditions in many locations in the electrical power grid. Conditions such as frequency, voltage phasors, current phasors and other valuable parameters can be used for state estimation, transient analysis, capacitor-bank performance monitoring, analysis of load shedding schemes, inter-area oscillation control, and other analysis. The growth of the electrical power grid, and the high frequency at which measurements can be obtained, present a need to provide power grid operators with analytical and decision making tools that can aid them in gathering, classifying and analyzing the power system conditions as quickly as possible.